Role of the Formulation in the Efficacy and Dissipation of Agricultural Insecticides

Considering the implications the formulation may have on the effectiveness and residuality of an active ingredient, four trials were conducted comparing two commercial formulations of the diazinon insecticide, two of acetamiprid, two of lambda-cyhalothrin, and, finally, three formulations of imidacloprid. For diazinon and acetamiprid, the comparison parameters used correspond to efficacy against three key pests in apple trees: Cydia pomonella, Diaspidiotus perniciosus, and Pseudococcus viburni; for l-cyhalothrin, efficacy against C. pomonella was compared; and for imidacloprid, differences in control P. viburni were established. In all cases, their persistence was established in terms of initial and final residue levels in samples of fruits, at 1 and 25 days after application (DAA). Different formulations of the same insecticide correspond to a relevant factor in the general behavior that each product presents in field conditions, being able to affect parameters such as its persistence in the fruit and/or initial deposit of the active ingredient. This variation was demonstrated in the comparison performed on acetamiprid, imidacloprid, and diazinon, but it was not so in l-cyhalothrin. Efficacy was affected in all parameters evaluated for each group of insecticides, demonstrating that different formulations can deliver different biological activity in the control of various pests

Clinical Fertility Management in Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome Patients

Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome affects 5-20% of women of reproductive age in the United States¹. It is a complex endocrine disorder that affects female fertility, insulin resistance, and produces symptoms of hyperandrogenism including cystic acne, hirsutism, and abdominal weight gain. Patients with PCOS who want to conceive should be treated with a multi-layered approach which can include lifestyle modification, pharmaceutical therapy, or surgery. Lifestyle modification includes weight loss through physical activity and dietary modification as well as focus on mental health. Pharmaceutical therapies include clomiphene citrate, letrozole, or gonadotropin therapy Finally, surgical intervention can be used as a third line treatment including ovarian drilling and IVF

The Origins of Humanities Computing and the Digital Humanities Turn

At its beginnings Humanities Computing was characterized by a primary interest in methodological issues and their epistemological background. Subsequently, Humanities Computing practice has been prevailingly driven by technological developments and the main concern has shifted from content processing to the representation in digital form of documentary sources. The Digital Humanities turn has brought more to the fore artistic and literary practice in direct digital form, as opposed to a supposedly commonplace application of computational methods to scholarly research. As an example of a way back to the original motivations of applied computation in the humanities, a formal model of the interpretive process is here proposed, whose implementation may be contrived through the application of data processing procedures typical of the so called artificial adaptive systems

Geography in Italy

Those who doubt the validity of the saying that “appearances are deceptive” would find much support for their scepticism in Italian geography. The discipline evolved in the course of the last century from a concept substantially coherent with the continental one into one that was entirely distinctive and sui generis. This was a consequence of a reorganization of educational curricula, especially those for university studies, whereby what had previously been viewed simply as a system for the f..

Fiber optic attenuator

A fiber optic attenuator of the invention is a mandrel structure through which a bundle of optical fibers is wrapped around in a complete circle. The mandrel structure includes a flexible cylindrical sheath through which the bundle passes. A set screw on the mandrel structure impacts one side of the sheath against two posts on the opposite side of the sheath. By rotating the screw, the sheath is deformed to extend partially between the two posts, bending the fiber optic bundle to a small radius controlled by rotating the set screw. Bending the fiber optic bundle to a small radius causes light in each optical fiber to be lost in the cladding, the amount depending upon the radius about which the bundle is bent

The Spotted Wing Drosophila in the South of the World: Chilean Case and Its First Productive Impacts

The spotted wing drosophila Drosophila suzukii Matsumura (Diptera: Drosophilidae) is endemic in Asia. This species was first reported in Chile in early 2017 in the region of La Araucanía, Los Ríos, and Los Lagos, but it has dispersed to other regions of the south-central area of the country, currently being in the category of plague present with restricted distribution. D. suzukii is a polyphagous pest, and it infests a wide range of fruit crops, including grapes, cherries, as well as an increasing number of wild fruits. Chile is the main cherry-producing country in the south of the world, providing mainly to the Asian market, so, although the pest is not a quarantine problem for this destination of the fruit, its potential damage is high due to the decrease in yield, fruit deterioration, and increased pre- and postharvest rot. The local productive reality also provides various hosts to the plague, allowing its expression and adaptation, for example, in blueberry orchards. This report summarizes the first signs of economic damage and explores the first results of control delivered by various insecticides: alpha-cypermethrin, acetamiprid, chlorantraniliprole, cyantraniliprole, emamectin benzoate, lambda- and gamma-cyhalothrin, spinetoram, and spinosad. Also, repellent effect of other compounds was studied

Covid-19 and diabetes mellitus: unveiling the interaction of two pandemics

A novel RNA betacoronavirus causing coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) has now been declared pandemic disease by WHO. Guo et al published the first report of biochemical features in patients with diabetes and the further risk that this disease can determine to the progression of Covid-19. Among different cytokines found significantly higher in patients with diabetes compared to those without, Interleukin-6 (IL-6), which is already increased in conditions of chronic inflammation, may play a more deleterious role in Covid-19 infection. Targeting the overexpression of Il-6 effects with a monoclonal antibody against IL-6 receptor or using Janus Kinase inhibitors may be particularly helpful for treatment of Covid-19 pneumonia in diabetes

Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults in the United Arab Emirates: Clinical Features and Factors Related to Insulin-Requirement

AIMS: To describe and to characterize clinical features of latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA) compared to type 1 and type 2 diabetes in the UAE. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study a dataset including 18,101 subjects with adult-onset (>30 years) diabetes was accessed. 17,072 subjects fulfilled the inclusion/exclusion criteria. Data about anthropometrics, demographics, autoantibodies to Glutamic Acid Decarboxylase (GADA) and to Islet Antigen 2 (anti-IA2), HbA1c, cholesterol and blood pressure were extracted. LADA was diagnosed according to GADA and/or anti-IA2 positivity and time to insulin therapy. RESULTS: 437 (2.6%) patients were identified as LADA and 34 (0.2%) as classical type 1 diabetes in adults. Mean age at diagnosis, BMI, waist circumference, systolic blood pressure and HbA1c significantly differed between, LADA, type 2 and type 1 diabetes, LADA showing halfway features between type 2 and type 1 diabetes. A decreasing trend for age at diagnosis and waist circumference was found among LADA subjects when subdivided by positivity for anti-IA2, GADA or for both antibodies (p=0.013 and p=0.011 for trend, respectively). There was a gradual downward trend in autoantibody titre in LADA subjects requiring insulin within the first year from diagnosis to subjects not requiring insulin after 10 years of follow-up (p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study describing the clinical features of LADA in the UAE, which appear to be different from both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Furthermore, we showed that the clinical phenotype of LADA is dependent on different patterns of antibody positivity, influencing the time to insulin requirement

Excellent intra and inter-observer reproducibility of wrist circumference measurements in obese children and adolescents

In a previous study, we found that wrist circumference, in particular its bone component,was associated with insulin resistance in a population of overweight/obese children. Theaim of the present study was to evaluate the intra- and inter-operator variability in wrist cir-cumference measurement in a population of obese children and adolescents. One hundredand two (54 male and 48 female) obese children and adolescents were consecutivelyenrolled. In all subjects wrist circumferences were measured by two different operators twotimes to assess intra- and inter-operator variability. Statistical analysis was performed usingSAS v.9.4 and JMP v.12. Measurements of wrist circumference showed excellent inter-operator reliability with Intra class Correlation Coefficients (ICC) of 0.96 and ICC of 0.97 forthe first and the second measurement, respectively. The intra-operator reliability was, also,very strong with a Concordance Correlation Coefficient (CCC) of 0.98 for both operators.The high reproducibility demonstrated in our results suggests that wrist circumference mea-surement, being safe, non-invasive and repeatable can be easily used in out-patient set-tings to identify youths with increased risk of insulin-resistance. This can avoid testing theentire population of overweight/obese children for insulin resistance parameter

The Pico Project: Looking ahead

Text mining methods are examined and assessed in order to find exact sources of Pico's theses ascribed to Medieval authors in his "Conclusiones nongentae"